The bruising sport of high-speed, competitive rollerskating goes back to the 1920s and roller derbies have waxed and waned in popularity ever since. The last occasion I can recall a movie on the subject was in 1972 when Raquel Welch produced Kansas City Bomber, an exposé of the professional business in which she also starred as a roller derby champion torn between love (ruthless manager Kevin McCarthy, the brother of novelist Mary), family (admiring daughter Jodie Foster) and professional integrity.

Drew Barrymore wasn't even born then and Whip It is altogether less judgmental. A warm-hearted, teenage rite-of-passage flick, it stars the attractive Ellen Page (of Juno fame) as Bliss Cavendar, a bright, 17-year-old, high school kid from a Texas small town who comes across roller derbies on a visit to Austin, the state capital. When I taught there 40 years ago, Austin was devoted to higher education and politicking. It's now a metropolis with, among other things, a major local film industry, a serious branch of alternative country music and, according to this picture, a competitive rollerskating culture.

For Bliss, roller derbies are an attractive alternative to the tedious, genteel, mother-daughter beauty pageants her mother (Marcia Gay Harden), a postal worker, enters her for. So she conceals her age and signs up for one of the toughest, raunchiest teams in this all-girl sport. Most of the participants are from blue-collar backgrounds and as addicted to tattooing as David Beckham or Lydia, the fairground beauty serenaded by Groucho Marx, and a number of them are in their 30s.

Speaking of Beckham, the plot of the movie is more or less identical to Bend it Like Beckham (though infinitely racier), with Bliss covertly balancing family life and her secret passion and ending up converting her parents to her new craze.

The team Bliss skates for is called the Hurl Scouts (hurl in this context is slang for vomit) and her nom de guerre is "Babe Ruthless". An older competitor styled "Maggie Mayhem" explains to the innocent Bliss that she psyches herself up for an angry contest by thinking of the man who gave her crabs.

Demographically, I'm not exactly the target audience for this film, but as a life-long lover of Americana it's right up my main street. I enjoyed Whip It immensely for its unpatronising view of provincial life and for the vigour of the performances: Juliette Lewis and Drew Barrymore throw themselves into it as veteran skaters with the bruises and bloody noses to prove it.

The title, by the way, refers to a bravura manoeuvre in which a star player uses another member of her team to thrust herself to the fore.